Just One Kiss
At midnight, I received just one kiss on the cheek from a member of my bubble, followed by a few apologetic fist bumps, in the spirit of 2020, from just a handful of people, while keeping our distance.
We watched the fireworks from Naughty Hill in Alto Vista, an impressive 15-minute show, a much-reduced than previously performance, in the spirit of 2020.
Lots of Prosecco. No French Champaign, in the spirit of 2020.
An evening high on gezeligheit, low on kisses and hugs.
We still liked it.
The kids bombarded the neighborhood with firecrackers, the dogs licked the pate off the low coffee table, but were forgiven, when they claimed its their nerves. Some things never change.
For the past umpteen years, we have been going downtown on December 31st, to watch the Renaissance pagara, receive a Dande blessing and have a late lunch.
The ritual repeated itself, without pagara, and without Dande, yesterday.
I have to say, it was equally fantastic.
We can do with less.
Sipping fancy cocktails at Hoja, getting drenched in the rain and dining lavishly at Universal, where our waiter Rudy, delivered a personable and attentive Chinese rice table experience, were some of the highlights of the day.
We love Aruba on New Year’s eve, even without kissing and hugging!
One more
Before tackling the arrival of 2021, I must confess I left out two MAJOR grateful notes.
Thank you to those who did not fire me, and allowed me to earn 60% of my income while sitting in my home office in PJs. That was great.
And thanks to frequent hand washes, I never caught a single flu!
Good riddance
After my politically correct gratitude, yesterday, we can honestly say good riddance to 2020, go to hell, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!
I listened to MinPres’ national address on the occasion of the New Year, she praised her ministers for their colossal achievements, and fully endorsed the new refinery investors. It was an uplifting, harmonic recap of 2020 events that proved we can handle everything we encounter thanks to our innate greatness and courage.
Veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. Easy.
Our beloved MinPres patted her cabinet members, the Police, the Health Department and our first responders on their collective backs, but did not outline a specific road map for the future. She asked us all to unite for a stronger economy, a stronger autonomy and a stronger Aruba but never explained how we can get there, with 29% local positive rate of infection, 291 active cases, and a debt to GDP at 93.5% in the second quarter of 2020.
I would just like to remind her that, as mentioned before, borrowing billions to sustain a current form of government, as if all we have to do is wait for the economy to rebound, soon, is simply delusional. The sweet talk without any sense of urgency, lulls us into a false sense of security, and we don’t want that, we want everyone on top of his/her game, productive and conscientious. Remember, we could not even pay our bills with a maxed-out tourism machine, and cannot expect to reach former income levels in 2021.
Let’s all do the same thing and achieve different results, is unrealistic.
We did not hear anything from her about a massive vaccination campaign. This is a small island, and according to my marketing guru friends, if we managed to vaccinate the entire population, this could be a great selling point: Aruba, One Vaccinated Island!
